Are Wall Street Speculators Driving Up Gasoline Prices?

http://www.truthout.org/052109D?n

Washington - Oil and gasoline prices are rising fast as Memorial Day weekend approaches, but not because supplies are tight or demand is high.

U.S. crude-oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades, and demand has fallen to a 10-year low, but crude oil prices have climbed more than 70 percent since mid-January to a six-month high of $62.04 on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, although refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, which leaves them plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season, the price of gasoline at the pump has climbed 28 cents a gallon from a month earlier to $2.33.

This time, Wall Street speculators - some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers' bailout money - may be to blame.

Big Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley and others are able to sidestep the regulations that limit investments in commodities such as oil, and they're investing on behalf of pension funds, endowments, hedge funds and other big institutional investors, in part as a hedge against rising inflation.

These investors now far outnumber big fuel consumers such as airlines and trucking companies, which try to protect themselves against price swings, and they're betting that the economy eventually will rebound, that the Obama administration's spending policies and Federal Reserve actions will trigger inflation - or both - and that oil prices will rise.

"They're buying because they think it will diversify their portfolio, and they think it will diversify their portfolio against inflation, and maybe they think the economy will turn around," said Michael Masters, a hedge-fund manager who testified before Congress last year about the consequences of what are called exchange-traded funds.

Oil contracts are traded mostly in U.S. dollars, and inflation would erode the value of oil earnings, stocks or any other asset denominated in U.S. currency. Many investors are pouring money into oil futures - contracts for future deliveries of oil at specified prices - in the belief that oil prices will rise as inflation erodes the dollar's value.

The Bilderberg Group

Each year since 1954 the concealed global controllers (central bank owners) send their appointed adjutants and invite their major media, corporate and government allies and agents to discuss and plan the social, political and economic future of the world for the coming year. At these annual gatherings these plutocratic power brokers determine how much to increase the price of oil, where to wage a rigged war, when to cause a "mortgage crisis" or an "al-qaeda" terrorist attack etc. Most if not all U.S. attendees of the Bilderberg Group are members of the Council on Foreign Relations or Trilateral Commission, while the European participants belong to their own equivalent secret societies such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Or as Professor Carroll Quigley remarked in his tome "Tragedy and Hope": "A world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreement arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

Following are various excerpts from Daniel Estulin's book The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, which is worth reading at least once I suppose. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars.

"The Trilateral Commission doesn't secretly run the world. The Council on Foreign Relations does that." --Winston Lord, President of CFR, 1978

"Whether a Democrat, a Republican, a Conservative or a Liberal is in power, the opposing rhetoric spouted by the candidates apparently have little to do with who actually wins the elections: the decision makers who pull the strings stay the same, because cabinet seats are always held by CFR members. Even as U.S. presidents come and go, the CFR's power and agenda remain the same." --D. Estulin

"Our national purpose should be to abolish American nationality and to take some risks in order to invite others to pool their sovereignty with ours." --Kingman Brewster Jr., CFR, U.S. Ambassador to Britain

"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the U.S., characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." --David Rockefeller, Memoirs

"According to hundreds of U.S. State Department documents, the Soviet industrial and military capabilities such as trucking, aircraft, oil, steel, petrochemicals, aluminum, and computers were constructed at the U.S. taxpayers expense. As Sutton pointed out in 1972, "There was no such thing as Soviet technology."

"The 9/11 crisis made Canada and the U.S redefine the protection of their borders. The debt crisis in Mexico forced the government to adopt a new economic model. Crises...can force democratic governments to make difficult decisions like those that will be required to create a North American community. Its not that I want another 9/11 crisis, but having a crisis would force decisions that otherwise might not get made." --Robert Pastor, CFR, advocate of "North American Union".

"Dutch newspaper report from Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau declaring first Bilderberg meetings were financed by the CIA. February 10, 2007." [Of course the CIA is simply a creation and auxiliary of the international interrelated central bankers, just as the CFR, Trilateral Commission etc. are too.--Damien]

22 Poems

Enjoy ;o)

(the title is the link)

Media Masters

Six ethnically interrelated corporations monopolize mass media:

http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml

1. AOL Time Warner-- CEO Jeffrey Bewkes


2. The Walt Disney Co.-- President/CEO Robert A. Iger


3. Bertelsmann AG-- Chairman/CEO Hartmut Ostrowski


4. Viacom-- Chairman Sumner M. Redstone


5. News Corporation-- Chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch


6. Vivendi Universal-- CEO Jean Bernard Levy

http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/granville.shtml

Like enormous sewage-pumps daily spewing out filth, news and lies shaping each new generation according to their degenerate and materialistic image.

Who Owns What?
http://www.cjr.org/resources

Donald Rumsfeld's funny business

by Robert Draper


Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics - his administration peers - are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they're saying? It isn't pretty.

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing's cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days' war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him ... To deliver their soul from death."

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: "It is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men."

Click here to see the covers


http://www.truthout.org/051909R?n

These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer's staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout - as one Pentagon staffer would later say - "would be as bad as Abu Ghraib."

But the Pentagon's top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush's public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because "my seniors" - JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself - appreciated the cover pages.

But one government official was disturbed enough by these biblically seasoned sheets to hold on to copies, which I obtained recently while debriefing the past eight years with those who lived them inside the West Wing and the Pentagon. Over the past several months, the battle to define the Bush years has begun taking shape: As President Obama has rolled back his predecessor's foreign and economic policies, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer, and former speechwriters Michael Gerson and Marc Thiessen have all taken to the airwaves or op-ed pages to cast the Bush years in a softer light.

My conversations with more than a dozen Bush loyalists, including several former cabinet-level officials and senior military commanders, have revealed another element of this legacy-building moment: intense feelings of ill will toward Donald Rumsfeld. Though few of these individuals would speak for the record (knowing that their former boss, George W. Bush, would not approve of it), they believe that Rumsfeld's actions epitomized the very traits - arrogance, stubbornness, obliviousness, ineptitude - that critics say drove the Bush presidency off the rails.

Bob Dobbs hoicking up the Astral Body archive

And now for some entertainment.

Here's Bob Dobbs hoicking up the Astral Body archive.

(Sorry, I don’t have time to change each web address to a link. Do it yourself! It’s all in the fun of it.)


1. iONic Rezonence 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeVP0y0TNmY&feature=channel_page

2. iON - Wavy Head Gravy 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lDmj2EN8NM&feature=channel_page

3. iON - Playful Thoughts R Us 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKg93zyKANg&feature=channel_page

4. iON - Gimme Sum GUF 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNL_F1LanhY&feature=channel_page

5. iON - Contrasting DisMay 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-sgzx9j4r4&feature=channel_page

6. iON - CNN Man About A Horse Cent 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69QphLMQKk0&feature=channel_page

7. iON - Swine Flew Over The Cuokoo's Nest 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5VnRmLwhHk&feature=channel_page

8. iON - Creative Resistence 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QfEMmL1Hg8&feature=channel_page

9. iON - Let Them Eat Cake 5/14/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjvyoSWJaI&feature=channel_page

10. iON - One Break Out of the Fear Loop 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLLLXvYtOvw&feature=channel_page

11. iON - Break Out of the Fear Loop Too 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbHWHrhOsx4&feature=channel_page

12. iON - Creative Effects Proceed the Causes 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV7cu5_BL3E&feature=channel_page

13. iON - Recreating Reincarnation 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IbA15VY21s&feature=channel_page

14. iON/Bob Dobbs - Sharp Contrast 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKehCH5rTDs&feature=channel_page

15. iON - Heavenz on Earth 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZAhK-k6RIA&feature=channel_page

16. iON - Heaven iON Earth 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvjufcyk8gk&feature=channel_page

17. iON - The Evolution of Consciousness 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWn1Ba0XlA&feature=channel_page

18. iON - Contentment in Content 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdR0sWP7Lu4&feature=channel_page

19. iON - U R the Center of the Universe 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRg62d6WRQM&feature=channel_page

20. iON - God: Is There a Dog? 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdP1v2AEFS4&feature=channel_page

21. iON - Cloning Souls 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxNmc5-pocI&feature=channel_page

22. iON - Take Back Your Power 321 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX6Pb0h_8jQ&feature=channel_page

23. iON - The Leading Edge of Creation 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py_1_RlM15M&feature=channel_page

24. iON - Godz Allowence 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCz9pqk2nBk&feature=channel_page

25. iONic ESP Connection 5/19/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL_LRUkJL1g&feature=channel_page

26. iON - Illuminati R Us 5/19/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT9msXw4QZo&feature=channel_page


Bob Dobbs

See also

FURRY LINT: FROM CLICHÉ TO ARCHETYPE (Hand Signals For The Blind)

http://www.fivebodied.com/archives/audio/catalog/CompleteBobTimeline.html

IMF and World Bank stealing water

The documentary FLOW (2008) reports on corporations, like Coca-Cola and Nestle, who are stealing groundwater and selling it in plastic bottles. The bottled water you drink is not “spring” water, nor are there any standards by which it is judged to be clean. Tests of bottled water have shown they contain bacteria. You're better off getting a water purifier for your tap water.

This film also reports on several European companies who are in cahoots with the IMF and World Bank to steal water and sell it back to poor people in remote areas. These corporations are run by madmen. There’s no other way to explain it.

The documentary just has to be seen to be believed. This is just a trailer. See the entire film!

Trailer from the documentary FLOW:




See below the water privatization agenda the IMF and World Bank are pushing through globally. These are truly truly evil bankers.

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/waterIMF.html

The significance of finding such a high number of conditions relating to water privatization and water cost recovery in IMF loans is twofold. First, in the hierarchy of international financial institutions the IMF is at the top. Compliance with IMF conditions enables governments to receive the "seal of approval" that permits access to other international creditors and investors. Thus IMF conditions weigh especially heavily upon borrowing governments. Second, it is quite common that World Bank loans have, as their first condition, compliance with certain IMF conditions. This is known as "cross conditionality." In the division of labor between the two institutions, it is the World Bank that has primary responsibility for "structural" issues such as the privatization of state-owned companies.

Therefore, it can be presumed that in every country where IMF loan conditions include water privatization or full cost recovery, there are corresponding World Bank loan conditions and water projects that are implementing the financial, managerial, and engineering details required for such "restructurings."

The table below identifies the 12 countries and paraphrases the specific IMF loan conditions relating to water privatization or water cost recovery. Eight of the 12 countries identified are in sub-saharan Africa. In six of the countries, the IMF conditions require some form of privatization, in four countries the conditions require both privatization and greater cost recovery, and in two the focus is just on cost recovery.

Continue reading:

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/waterIMF.html


Please sign the petition below.

U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 31: Please sign petition below. "Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance."


http://www.article31.org/

I Knew it was Wrong but Thought is was Legal (revisited_

The rave reviews essay ;o)

reorganized, expanded, polished, enlightened spontaneous bulimia

(click on the title if you dare)

Super Duper Red Wine Liver Cleanse!

Don't believe the bunk.

Dr. Carolyn Dean calls bullshit on the wine industry!:


Here’s the scientific contradiction of the week: Two glasses of red wine EACH day can help clear up fatty liver – the most common side-effect of alcoholism!

Now, red wine might be a better choice than a bottle of rum – thanks to the presence of resveratrol (a wonderful antioxidant and antifungal). Still, I wouldn’t encourage anybody with fatty liver – especially an alcoholic – to gulp down 3.5 liters of wine a week.

But that’s exactly what was recommended by Science Daily, in their May 13 article, Two Glasses Of Wine A Day Helps To Reduce Quantity Of Fat In Liver.

http://esciencenews.com/sources/science.daily/2009/05/13/two.glasses.of.wine.a.day.helps.to.reduce.quantity.of.fat.in.liver

As Dr. Roby Mitchel said, when he sent me this article, "This is irresponsible journalism." Honestly, some people will take it seriously. So Let’s Clear Something up Here…

Wine is a super-concentrated glass of fructose (fruit sugar). Fructose feeds the yeast in your body. And, as we’ve been talking about this week, yeast release up to 178 different toxins as their natural waste product.

And where do those toxins go? That’s right… They go to your liver for processing. Can you guess where all the excess fructose that the yeast doesn’t consume ends up? Yep. Liver again.

The liver stores some sugar away. The rest it turns into fat (as triglycerides). Therefore, if you’re consuming too much sugar, your liver will produce too much fat. Too much fat then clogs up the liver. That’s why we are seeing teenagers, living off high-fructose corn syrup, with livers that look like a 50-year-old alcoholic.

I can’t help but think that the study was funded by the wine industry.


http://www.drcarolyndean.com/2009/05/16/the-red-wine-liver-cleanse/


*******************************

Dr. Carolyn Dean is right. I should know. I was a Wino for the California Wine Institute. Read all about it here:


http://www.huntergatheress.com/pdfs/darc.pdf

Dick Cheney Exposed

Finally, Dick Cheney is afraid of going to prison. But that’s where his evil ass belongs.

Why the Caged Bird is Singing? Precisely because a waterboard is something you bring to the beach. The stories about naked confinement, bugs, drowning, is not the worst of the torture. The worst has yet to come out and that’s why Obama is sitting on it.

The truth will hatch no matter how many of them sit on it.

Why is Dick Cheney acting so weird?

Seymour Hersh: "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Excerpted from:

http://www.truthout.org/051509J?n


The American public has been aware of our use of torture for some time now. The Obama administration has made it all too clear that they have strong reservations about prosecuting the architects of the Bush administration's torture policy, and that any meaningful actions along those lines are highly unlikely to be taken.

Why, then?

It is because Cheney knew, when he began his media assault, that the worst of the horrors inflicted upon detainees at his specific command are not yet widely known. If the real stuff comes into full public light, he feared the general outrage will be so furious and all-encompassing that the Obama administration will have no choice but to reverse itself and seek prosecutions of those Bush-era officials who specifically demanded those barbaric acts be inflicted upon prisoners.

This is not about waterboarding, as gruesome as that practice is. It is not about putting prisoners in confined spaces, or about pushing them, or slapping them, or putting bugs on them or demeaning them and their religious faith.

It is about this, from July of 2004:

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, The Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.

Hersh: "Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."


Dick Cheney wanted everyone talking about waterboarding, close confinement, and all the rest of the torture techniques outlined in the recently-released "Torture Memos." Talking about waterboarding is still safe territory for him and everyone else who served his cruel intentions in the Bush administration. They're taking some heat, sure, but the story has been out there for a while and he's not wearing prison stripes yet.

I know why this caged bird sang. He was terrified of the very real cage that could be waiting to swing open and swallow him up if the true nature of his torture directives became widely known. If the entire country comprehends the awful fact that women and boys were forcibly raped upon his specific orders, Dick Cheney's bets would all be off.

That was then, however, and this is now. Dick Cheney is breathing a little easier today, and why shouldn't he? President Obama appears to have pretty much let Cheney, along with all the other enables of torture, off the hook.

"President Obama is seeking to block the release of photographs depicting American military personnel abusing captives in Iraq and Afghanistan, an administration official said Wednesday," reports The New York Times. The president's decision marks a sharp reversal from a decision made last month by the Pentagon, which reached a deal with the American Civil Liberties Union to release photographs showing incidents at Abu Ghraib and a half-dozen other prisons. 'Last week, the president met with his legal team and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the D.O.D. photos because he believes their release would endanger our troops,' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'And because he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court.'"

To me, this means two things.

The pictures are really, really, really bad, just as Sy Hersh said they would be.

There will be no punishment, no justice, for acts of barbarous torture undertaken at the specific behest of men like Dick Cheney. The Obama administration has chosen the easier path, chosen to ignore the manifest harm done to this nation and the world by refusing to seek that necessary justice.

"Swine flu an American/Zionist plot"

Iranian TV tells it like it is?

Iran TV: "Swine flu an American/Zionist plot"

Rumsfeld To Profit From Swine Flu Hoax?

“Roche has offered 6.5 million doses of Tamiflu to the World Health Organization and 1 million doses to Mexico.”

This is all about getting poor countries to stockpile Tamiflu. Look no further than Roche, Gilead and other big pharma companies fighting to get their generic versions of the drug into these countries.

RECAP: In 2005 we saw these headlines: Who Owns the Rights on Tamiflu: Rumsfeld To Profit From Bird Flu Hoax:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1148

Rumsfeld also pushed through the neurotoxin Aspartame. See “How Aspartame Became Legal”:

http://www.rense.com/general33/legal.htm

This man is really evil.

See many warnings against Tamiflu on youtube:

TAMIFLU IS EVIL AND WILL HELP REDUCE THE POPULATION BY SPREADING TO WILD BIRDS



The real maker of Tamiflu, however, is Gilead Sciences. Donald Rumsfeld has been on the board of directors of Gilead since its beginning in 1987. Now we read that Rumsfeld bought some shiny new Gilead stocks last year.

****************

According to the Telegraph UK:

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/j-ryan/blog/2009/05/13/oh_dear_the_iranians_have_found_out_the_truth_about_swine_flu?num=4&pg=1

"In his speech, Barak Obama mentioned a medicine called Tamiflu - but what exactly is Tamiflu? Who are the compassionate manufacturers of this medicine? This great pharmacist is none other than Rumsfeld, the former American secretary of defense. He is one of the shareholders, and an active and influential member on the board of directors of Gilead Science, which is the main provider of medicine for this disease.

"It should be noted that the Gilead Sciences is a Jewish company. Its name, in Hebrew means "holy place," and all its shareholders are Zionists."

Dr. Ali-Reza Mehrabi, ShaidBeheshtiUniversity: "The United States is one of the few countries with an arsenal of viruses.

"It is interesting that last year, [Rumsfeld] bought, if I'm not mistaken, 18 billion dollars worth of new Gilead stocks."

"If we accept the assumption that work was conducted in a laboratory in Mexico - whether in a pig farm or some other place - the mere fact that this substance found its way out, even if by mistake, shows that the U.S. is conducting experiments in a peripheral country, rather than on its own soil. In this case, the U.S. might have lost control."

************

And finally, here’s the cover-up we were waiting for. It didn't take long, did it?

May 15, 2009

Swine Flu Not an Accident From a Lab, W.H.O. Says

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The swine flu virus did not result from a laboratory accident, the World Health Organization said Thursday, working to debunk rumors started by an Australian virologist and circulated by news outlets all over the world.

“We took this very seriously,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s deputy director general, said of the virologist’s assertion. “But the evidence suggests that this is a naturally occurring virus, not a laboratory-derived virus.”

In a telephone news conference, Dr. Fukuda also expressed support for drug companies’ making a generic version of the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Many poor countries have no stockpiles of the drug.

Almost 6,500 confirmed cases of the new H1N1 flu have been reported from 33 countries, and 65 people have died, the W.H.O. said. About 4,300 confirmed and probable cases, with 3 deaths, were reported in the United States.

A woman in Arizona who was suffering from lung disease died last week from complications of swine flu, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health said late Thursday, Reuters reported.

The virus rumor was started by Adrian J. Gibbs, a retired plant virologist from the Australian National University, who previously published work in the journal Science questioning the idea, now accepted, that the 1918 pandemic started as a bird flu.

Dr. Gibbs, who had studied the gene sequences of the swine flu virus posted on public data banks, argued that it must have been grown in eggs, the medium used in vaccine laboratories. He reached that conclusion, he said, because the new virus was not closely related to known ones and because it had more of the amino acid lysine and more mutations than typical strains of swine flu.

His theory was reported by Bloomberg News on Tuesday. Even though scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwere skeptical and some prominent virologists openly derisive, news outlets have repeated and magnified the theory, adding speculation about bioterrorism that even Dr. Gibbs repudiated. He was also interviewed Thursday on the ABC News program“Good Morning America.”

Dr. Fukuda said a W.H.O. panel of experts had concluded that “the hypothesis does not really stand up to scrutiny.” The lysine residues and mutation rates were typical, he said, and many swine flus seem unrelated because not enough pigs are tested each year.

But he added that he doubted that the rumor would prove damaging, and he said he would not want genetic sequences kept off public databases.

“This is healthy,” he said. “This is much better than dealing with rumors where you don’t know where the mistake comes from and can’t correct it.”

Persistent false rumors, like those that AIDS is not caused by a virus or that polio vaccine sterilizes Muslim girls, have devastated efforts to control other diseases.

Scientists have yet to pinpoint the origin of the swine flu virus, the earliest cases of which were found in Veracruz, Mexico. It contains genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia, as well as avian and human genes.

Late Thursday, Smithfield Foods reported that the Mexican health authorities had not found the new virus in herds at its huge hog-fattening operations in Veracruz, which some have blamed for the outbreak. But it was not clear what test was used; only blood tests for antibodies would show whether pigs had the virus in February, when the human outbreak is thought to have begun.

As for the use of oseltamivir, the generic form of Tamiflu, the W.H.O. has certified only one drug — Antiflu, made by the Indian company Cipla in both pill and liquid forms — as equivalent to brand-name Tamiflu.

Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, Cipla’s chairman, said he would sell large amounts to Mexico and was in discussion with countries in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

The move could prompt patent lawsuits by Gilead Sciences and Roche, which developed and sell Tamiflu, so Cipla will sell only to countries indemnifying them against such suits, the company said.

Roche has offered 6.5 million doses of Tamiflu to the World Health Organization and 1 million doses to Mexico.

Dr. Hamied, reluctant to buy supplies for orders that might not materialize, said that poor countries should stockpile shikimic acid, the oseltamivir precursor, then pay Cipla or other generic companies to make the drug as needed.

The swine flu may cause the W.H.O. to cut short its nine-day annual conference of world health ministers so they can get home to fight the disease, Reuters reported.

Afghanistan: A Counter-Counter-Intelligence Analysis

The title is the link ;o)

Secrets of the Federal Reserve

"Essentially what the Fed has done is to change Uncle Sam into Uncle Sap. We have become the saps for Wall Street."


Actual Bailout May Exceed $10 Trillion

By Matt Renner, truthout.org


Ask most people on the street how much money taxpayers are using to save banks and you will probably hear the number $700 billion. [ . . . ]

But the actual number is much bigger. The current block of taxpayer money that has been pledged by the US government and the Federal Reserve to prevent the system from collapsing, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News, is roughly $12.8 trillion as of March 31. This money has been lent, spent or guaranteed to prevent a systemic collapse. The Bloomberg report and a chart showing broad categories of where the money has come from and the programs it funds can be found here.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=armOzfkwtCA4

Critics have pointed out that the Federal Reserve, the public-private partnership that controls the supply of dollars on the world stage and in the United States, controls the majority of this emergency money - $7.765 trillion - and is being secretive about where the money is going.

In an interview with Truthout, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida), said the Federal Reserve is practicing "Enron accounting," and has "socialized Wall Street's bad bets." A lawyer with years of experience battling corruption on behalf of taxpayers and whistleblowers, Representative Grayson began a crusade to follow the bailout money after taking office in January 2009. As a member of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, Representative Grayson has been challenging bank executives and members of the Federal Reserve to disclose the terms of the massive hidden deals.

"The Federal Reserve likes to bill itself as an independent agency but what it really is is an agency that is entirely dependent on banks. When you look and see how it is structured, you see that Wall Street runs the show. This is something that people on the political right have been complaining about for decades. Everybody's worst nightmares are now taking place because we are seeing the transfer of literally trillions of dollars of wealth from the taxpayer to the bad banks," Grayson said.

Regarded by many as the most powerful institution in the world, the Federal Reserve operates in concert with the US government, but is not under public control.

See video here: Congressman Grayson Questions Fed
http://blip.tv/file/2104758

"In the [Citigroup deal] there are billions upon billions of dollars of income on these assets even after they go bad because they [the underlying mortgages] don't all go bad. So these assets produce billions of dollars of income every year and Citigroup gets to keep the income as well as the appreciation on the assets and the government just takes the losses," Representative Grayson told Truthout.

The Citigroup deal was made public because it involved other government agencies including the US Treasury. According to Bloomberg and Representative Grayson, the Federal Reserve has been engaging in transactions which it has kept off of its publicly available balance sheet.

"The strange thing about this is that only two trillion of this activity has turned up on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. In the case of the Citibank deal, it is on Citibank's balance sheet and off the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, which makes no sense whatsoever," Grayson said, adding "The Federal Reserve has adopted Enron book-keeping procedures at this point."

The off-balance sheet activities of the Federal Reserve may have helped sick banks clear out their books and pass the so-called bank "stress test," according to Grayson. "Essentially what the Fed has done is to change Uncle Sam into Uncle Sap. We have become the saps for Wall Street," Grayson said.

Continue to roll your eyes here:

http://www.truthout.org/051309J?n

Swine Flu May Be Human Error; WHO Investigates Claim

Winning quote:

“My guess is that the picture should be a lot clearer over the next few days,” Fukuda said. “We have asked a lot of people to look at this.”

My guess is the picture will be a lot more vague and will get more and more vague as time goes on. This is the clearest picture we're gonna get.

“It’s much more likely that some random thing has put these two viruses together.”

Like some random bastard?

“You really want a very sober assessment” of the science behind the claim, Fukuda said May 11 at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.

A "sober assessment" by those drunk on power is unlikely to happen.

“This is how science progresses,” he said. “Somebody comes up with a wild idea, and then they all pounce on it and kick you to death, and then you start off on another silly idea.”

Continue shirking.


By Jason Gale and Simeon Bennett

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afrdATVXPEAk&refer=worldwide

May 13 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization is investigating a claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.

Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus’s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint.

“One of the simplest explanations is that it’s a laboratory escape,” Gibbs said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. “But there are lots of others.”

The World Health Organization received the study last weekend and is reviewing it, Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director-general of health security and environment, said in an interview May 11. Gibbs, who has studied germ evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists to analyze the genetic makeup of the virus that was identified three weeks ago in Mexico and threatens to touch off the first flu pandemic since 1968.

A virus that resulted from lab experimentation or vaccine production may indicate a greater need for security, Fukuda said. By pinpointing the source of the virus, scientists also may better understand the microbe’s potential for spreading and causing illness, Gibbs said.

Possible Mistake

“The sooner we get to grips with where it’s come from, the safer things might become,” Gibbs said by phone from Canberra yesterday. “It could be a mistake” that occurred at a vaccine production facility or the virus could have jumped from a pig to another mammal or a bird before reaching humans, he said.

Gibbs and two colleagues analyzed the publicly available sequences of hundreds of amino acids coded by each of the flu virus’s eight genes. He said he aims to submit his three-page paper today for publication in a medical journal. “You really want a very sober assessment” of the science behind the claim, Fukuda said May 11 at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has received the report and has decided there is no evidence to support Gibbs’s conclusion, said Nancy Cox, director of the agency’s influenza division. She said since researchers don’t have samples of swine flu viruses from South America and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, those regions can’t be ruled out as natural sources for the new flu.

No Evidence

“We are interested in the origins of this new influenza virus,” Cox said. “But contrary to what the author has found, when we do the comparisons that are most relevant, there is no evidence that this virus was derived by passage in eggs.”

The WHO’s collaborative influenza research centers, which includes the CDC, and sites in Memphis, Melbourne, London and Tokyo, were asked by the international health agency to review the study over the weekend, Fukuda said. The request was extended to scientists at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, as well as the WHO’s influenza network, he said.

“My guess is that the picture should be a lot clearer over the next few days,” Fukuda said. “We have asked a lot of people to look at this.”

Virus Expert

Gibbs wrote or co-authored more than 250 scientific publications on viruses during his 39-year career at the Australian National University in Canberra, according to biographical information on the university’s Web site.

Swine flu has infected 5,251 people in 30 countries so far, killing 61, according to WHO data. Scientists are trying to determine whether the virus will mutate and become more deadly if it spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and back. Flu pandemics occur when a strain of the disease to which few people have immunity evolves and spreads.

Gibbs said his analysis supports research by scientists including Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, who found the new strain is the product of two distinct lineages of influenza that have circulated among swine in North America and Europe for more than a decade.

In addition, Gibbs said his research found the rate of genetic mutation in the new virus was about three times faster than that of the most closely related viruses found in pigs, suggesting it evolved outside of swine.

Gene Evolution

“Whatever speeded up the evolution of these genes happened at least seven or eight years ago, so one wonders, why hasn’t it been found?” Gibbs said today. Some scientists have speculated that the 1977 Russian flu, the most recent global outbreak, began when a virus escaped from a laboratory.

Identifying the source of new flu viruses is difficult without finding the exact strain in an animal or bird “reservoir,” said Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin, a virologist at the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization in Melbourne.

“If you can’t find an exact match, the best you can do is compare sequences,” she said. “Similarities may give an indication of a possible source, but this remains theoretical.” The World Organization for Animal Health, which represents chief veterinary officers from 174 countries, received the Gibbs paper and is working with the WHO on an assessment, said Maria Zampaglione, a spokeswoman.

Genetic Patterns

The WHO wants to know whether any evidence that the virus may have been developed in a laboratory can be corroborated and whether there are other explanations for its particular genetic patterns, according to Fukuda. “These things have to be dealt with straight on,” he said. “If someone makes a hypothesis, then you test it and you let scientific process take its course.”

Gibbs said he has no evidence that the swine-derived virus was a deliberate, man-made product. “I don’t think it could be a malignant thing,” he said. “It’s much more likely that some random thing has put these two viruses together.”

Gibbs, who spent most of his academic career studying plant viruses, said his major contribution to the study of influenza occurred in 1975, while collaborating with scientists Graeme Laver and Robert Webster in research that led to the development of the anti-flu medicines Tamiflu and Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc.

Bird Poo

“We were out on one of the Barrier Reef islands, off Australia, catching birds for the flu in them, and I happened to be the guy who caught the best,” Gibbs said. The bird he got “yielded the poo from which was isolated the influenza isolate strain from which all the work on Tamiflu and Relenza started.”

Gibbs, who says he studies the evolution of flu viruses as a “retirement hobby,” expects his research to be challenged by other scientists. “This is how science progresses,” he said. “Somebody comes up with a wild idea, and then they all pounce on it and kick you to death, and then you start off on another silly idea.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jason Gale in Geneva at j.gale@bloomberg.net; Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net.

How Americans Think About Torture

Observations on “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”

Or “A Waterboard is something you bring to the beach”

From:
How Americans Think About Torture
http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/2009/05/11/how-americans-think-about-torture-and-why/

Based on this sampling of polling results, it is easy at first to be surprised and troubled by the degree to which Americans have expressed support for the inhumane treatment and torture of detainees. But public sentiment on such matters does not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, it often reflects the influence of carefully orchestrated marketing campaigns by powerful vested interests eager to shape opinion in support of a specific agenda or facts on the ground. Certainly it is now well known that the Bush administration embraced the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in national security settings. It is therefore instructive to carefully consider the five-pronged message that they and their backers promoted to create a citizenry supportive of torture.

The first component involved fostering a "war on terror" environment of pervasive fear in which the prospect of massive, catastrophic harm was repeatedly given center stage. Spurred on by improbable ticking time-bomb scenarios where every second matters, perceptions of an urgent need to protect the country from looming disaster created a "whatever it takes" mentality in which efforts to extract crucial information through harsh interrogations and torture became a "no brainer."

The second element advanced the view that we need not be helpless against this threat because through torture-and torture alone-we can learn what we need to foil the plans of evildoers. Unsubstantiated evidentiary claims, hidden from inspection by veils of secrecy, were used to argue that specific interrogation techniques - regardless of how they might repulse us - were ultimately the only way we could protect ourselves.

Third was the frequent assurance that those we subjected to torture were themselves guilty of having participated in heinous acts of injustice that caused the loss of many innocent lives. This argument served to diminish concerns the public might have felt over the treatment these individuals received while in custody. Even in the absence of legal proceedings, the detainees could be deemed deserving of the physical and psychological pain inflicted upon them - they were responsible for their own suffering.

Fourth was the repeated assertion that the United States has a finely tuned moral compass and engages in torture only with regret and discomfort, only as a last resort, and only in the service of a far greater good. Sharp contrasts were drawn between "them" and "us"-between the detainees' innate evilness and our inherent goodness, between their vile aims and our righteous purpose. In this context, the interrogators were presented as courageous and heroic, worthy of praise rather than criticism.

Fifth was a concerted effort to stifle open debate when questions about the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" arose. Standard strategy here involved painting skeptics and critics-including human rights leaders and organizations-as untrustworthy, irresponsible, misinformed, weak, or unpatriotic. In so doing, the public was encouraged to discount, ignore, or condemn these voices of concern, and important words of warning therefore went unheeded.

In sum, this seemingly successful campaign of mass persuasion depended upon convincing the public to believe five things: (1) our country is in great danger, (2) torture is the only thing that can keep us safe, (3) the people we torture are monstrous wrongdoers, (4) our decision to torture is moral and for the greater good, and (5) critics of our torture policy should not be trusted. And all the while, the marketers painstakingly avoided using the actual word "torture"-and contested the word's use by anyone else. Of course, this strategy is by no means unique to the selling of torture. A similar approach, designed for hawking war, was used with devastating and tragic effect in building public support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Report from Iron Mountain Revisited

"What we fail to acknowledge is that the system itself is totalitarian. This means that it is designed to exert total control over the lives of individuals."


The Report from Iron Mountain Revisited

by Richard C. Cook


What impresses me in the current financial crisis is the near-total failure of so-called progressives to appreciate the magnitude of what is going on or the level of intelligence behind it. How many will say, for instance, that the crash was deliberately engineered by the creation, then destruction, of the investment bubbles of the last decade?


When the financial system creates bubbles it drives up the cost of assets far beyond their true value in producing or storing wealth. When the bubbles burst the value of the assets plummets. Those with ready cash then buy them up on the cheap. When the dust settles more wealth has been concentrated in fewer hands. The rich get richer, and ordinary people are left in a deeper condition of indebtedness, poverty, and pressure to perform to the liking of the financial masters.


Progressives think the system needs to be “reformed.” Maybe the banking system needs to be re-regulated or even nationalized. Maybe it should be possible for families facing loss of their homes to get a lower monthly payment from a bankruptcy court. Maybe the government instead of the private sector should administer student loans.


What we fail to acknowledge is that the system itself is totalitarian. This means that it is designed to exert total control over the lives of individuals. We are accustomed to use this label when thinking of anachronisms of history like communism or fascism. We do not understand that globalist finance capitalism and the government which protects, enables, or even regulates it are also totalitarian.


What has happened in the last year as the financial system has seemingly gone belly-up, and is coming back only through massive government bailouts, is part of a pattern that has been around for decades if not centuries. How the controllers work was laid out in 1967 when Dial Press published a leaked copy of The Report from Iron Mountain. This was a study put together by a team of academics and analysts who met at the underground facility in New York that was home to the Hudson Institute.


The report began by identifying war as the central organizing principle of society. It stated, “War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today.”


The report said that, “The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers.” It said that any failure of will by the ruling class could lead to “actual disestablishment of military institutions.” The effect on the system would be, the report said, “catastrophic.”

The appearance of the report caused a sensation when it came out at the onset of the Vietnam War. Officials within the government had no comment, and the report faded into history. But certain of its sections fit the situation in 2009 precisely.


This is because the report outlined the ways the civilian population of a developed nation could be controlled even in the absence of a large-scale war that disrupted their daily lives. One of these ways was defined as follows: “A…possible surrogate for the control of potential enemies of society is the reintroduction, in some form consistent with modern technology and political process, of slavery….The development of a sophisticated form of slavery may be an absolute prerequisite for social control….” (Cited in Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs, 2000.)


We see the development of such a “sophisticated form of slavery” today. What else can a system be called that subjects the population to skyrocketing personal and household debt, a widening gap between the rich and everyone else, constant warfare justified as necessary to fight “terrorism,” erosion of personal freedoms, constantly expanding power allocated to the military and police, pervasive electronic eavesdropping, complete lack of accountability by politicians for their dishonesty and crimes, a mass media devoted solely to establishment propaganda, etc.


None of this seems to be diminishing under the Barack Obama administration. Even the economic recovery Obama is attempting to engineer through massive Keynesian deficit spending is expected by economists to be another “jobless” one like that of 2002-2005. Of course the unemployed or those who fear unemployment are easy to control. And the permanent series of Asian land wars George W. Bush instigated for control of resources and geopolitical leverage against Russia and China continue unabated.


None of this is accidental. As The Report from Iron Mountain made clear four decades ago, it’s what has been planned all along.

Richard C. Cook is a former federal analyst who writes on public policy issues. His book “We Hold These Truths: the Hope of Monetary Reform” is now available at www.tendrilpress.com. His website is www.richardccook.com

Solution to inflation

Thanks Damien for reporting on that.

I'm going down to buy a taco. Be right back.

Priests of Power

Buffet Sees Massive Inflation to Handle Staggering Debt

The explosive rise of the U.S. budget deficit and debt burden will lead to serious inflation down the road, says billionaire and Obama supporter Warren Buffet. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that government debt will peak around 54% of GDP in 2011.

"A country that continuously expands its debt as a percentage of GDP and raises much of the money abroad to finance that, at some point, it's going to inflate its way out of the burden of that debt. Every country that has denominated its debt in its own currency and has found itself with uncomfortable amounts of debt relative to the rest of the world, in the end they inflate. That becomes a tax on everybody that has fixed dollar investments", Buffet explains:
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/headlines/warren_buffett/2009/05/04/210480.html?s=al&promo_code=7F1D-1

Of course if this projected scenario transpires the billionaire bankers of the Federal Reserve who engineered the inflation crisis will still remain billionaires, while only the proletarians will see their money deteriorate. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors consists of seven members--two posts are presently vacant.

The five seated members are: Front Row (L-R): Elizabeth Duke, Kevin Warsh, Ben Bernanke, Donald Kohn, Daniel Tarullo. Standing behind them are the appointed Presidents of each of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks occupying various cities. These "individuals" pictured here are not the real rulers of America, since they themselves have been chosen by the actual hidden overseers or the primary private Fed stockholder banks, just as every worthless U.S. President has been since at least 1913. The top eight stockholders of the Fed are revealed on page 13 of Gary Kah's book En Route to Global Occupation. These are the agents responsible for the current socioeconomic condition of American society. Whether one approves or denounces their actions or policies depends on one's particular psychology. One either asserts that the purpose of a government is to sustain a quality social order for its citizens or to transform it into an uncivilized crime-ridden dump. You be the judge.

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run my maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." --John Lennon

"We are the priests of power." --1984

Swine Flu And Dangerous Virus Experimentation

Swine Flu And Dangerous Virus Experimentation
Transplanting Pig Viruses into Human Beings
From Dr. Alan Cantwell MD
5-7-9

Sent to me by Alan Cantwell and posted at Jeff Rense. This answers a lot of the questions we've been asking here.

http://www.rense.com/general85/swwi.htm

Hi Jeff...

Thanks for posting the interesting article from The New York Times (May 5, 2009) about "10 (virus) genes furiously evolving." http://www..nytimes.com/2009/05/05/health/05virus.html)

Carl Zimmer reports: "Viruses are diverse because they can mutate very fast and can mix genes. They sometimes pick up genes from their hosts, and they can swap genes with other viruses. Some viruses, including flu viruses, carry out a kind of mixing known as reassortment. If two different flu viruses infect the same cell, the new copies of their genes get jumbled up as new viruses are assembled."

So why do scientists routinely perform dangerous experiments such as are planting pig tissue into human beings?? For example, see the Phyllida Brown article (below) that appeared in New Scientist more than a decade ago on 1 March 1997. It is posted on:
http://www.dhushara.com/book/genes/genaug/gtdec1.htm

Why do virologists rush to blame pigs for the virus causing the current flu pandemic? Why do they ignore their own viral experiments where pig viruses (and viruses from various other species) are transplanted into humans and into human tissue - and then allowed to swap genes and mutate with human viruses? Could the current "new" swine flu virus", which is a mix of human, pig and bird viruses, have its origin in gene-swapping viral lab experiments that have been going on extensively over the past half-century?

Just asking,

Alan Cantwell, M.D.
Transplant Worries New Scientist
1 Mar 97 Phyllida Brown

http://www.dhushara.com/book/genes/genaug/gtdec1.htm

AMERICA's health officials are under attack for allowing animal organs to be transplanted into humans, despite mounting evidence that they may bring viruses with them. The criticism comes after two teams of researchers found that pigs-the most promising source of organs for transplantcarry a virus that can infect human cells. Although the researchers have told the US Food and Drug Administration of their concerns, the FDA continues to allow transplants to take place. in the current issue of Nature Medicine (vol 3, p 282), Robin Weiss and his colleagues at the Institute of Cancer Research in London show that a retrovirus-the group of viruses that includes HIV-infects human cells in the lab.

Because the virus is incorporated into the pig's DNA, it cannot be removed except by selecting genetic variants of pigs that lack the virus, and breeding them to create a virus-free strain. Weiss first revealed his team's results last year at a meeting in New York.

Now David Onions, a virologist at the University of Glasgow says he has "very, very similar" results. "We think this is a matter of concern," says Onions, who advises Imutran, a British biotechnology company that is developing xenotransplant technology. "If the virus gets into human cells at all one has to take it very seriously." Last September, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta published guidelines for the use of animal organs in human transplants. They recommend that animals are screened for disease, that samples of tissue should be archived, that local review boards assess the risk of infectious disease, and that people who are given organs are monitored afterwards.

But Jon Allan, a virologist at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas, has attacked the guidelines. Writing in Nature Medicine, Allan says they are "dubious" because they do not say what sort of infections should be monitored for, and because they leave the responsibility for policing transplants to surgeons and local review boards. "I think banning transplants is the least they [the FDA] can do," Allan told New Scientist.

Weiss says he told the FDA about his findings last October. Weiss also wrote to the FDA in December. However, the FDA and the CDC have not changed the draft guidelines. "I think perhaps they have not thought quite deeply enough about it," says Weiss. He adds that researchers have known for 20 years that built-in, or endogenous, retroviruses that are harmless in their natural host can jump species and cause disease in their new hosts. Philip Noguchi, director of the division of cellular and gene therapies at the FDA, says that he is not surprised by the findings, which have been confirmed by the FDKs own researchers.

The FDA has never iinph.ed that animal organs are safe, he says, and it issued the guidelines in draft form to stimulate discussion. Noguchi says that the FDA may now consider the need for specific tests for endogenous retroviruses in animals that are being used to provide organs for transplant. It may also take a formal role in overseeing local review boards. Pig tissues have already been transplanted into people. And alongside Weiss's results in Nature Medicine, a team that includes researchers from the biotechnology company Diacrin in Charlestovvn, Massachusetts, reports transplanting cells from the brains of pig fetuses into a patient with Parkinson's disease.

Alan Cantwell M.D.
alancantwell@sbcglobal.net
http://www.ariesrisingpress.com
author of, AIDS & The Doctors of Death and Queer Blood

Drones and terrorists - swinging at a gnat with a hammer?

"Since 2006, we've killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we've killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area.”

http://www.truthout.org/050709A?n

Stopping Pakistani Drone Strikes

By Robert Naiman

Until this week, it seemed like the conventional wisdom in Washington was that stopping US drone strikes in Pakistan was outside the bounds of respectable discussion.

That just changed. Or it should have.

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, Doyle McManus notes that counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen has told Congress that US drone strikes in Pakistan are backfiring and should be stopped. Until now, Congress has been reluctant to challenge the drone strikes, as they are reluctant in general to challenge "military strategy," even when it appears to be causing terrible harm. But as McManus notes, Kilcullen has unimpeachable Pentagon credentials. He served as a top adviser in Iraq to General Petraeus on counterinsurgency, and is credited as having helped design the Iraq "surge." Now, anyone in Washington who wants to challenge the drone strikes has all the political cover they could reasonably expect.

And what Kilcullen said leaves very little room for creative misinterpretation:

"Since 2006, we've killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we've killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. The drone strikes are highly unpopular. They are deeply aggravating to the population. And they've given rise to a feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism.... The current path that we are on is leading us to loss of Pakistani government control over its own population."

Presumably, causing the Pakistani government to lose "control of its own population" is not an objective of United States foreign policy.

McManus says there's no sign that the Obama administration is taking Kilcullen's advice and the Obama administration is unlikely to abandon "one of the few strategies that has produced results." But a Washington Post report suggests otherwise:

Although the missile attacks are privately approved by the Pakistani government, despite its public denunciations, they are highly unpopular among the public. As Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's domestic problems have grown, the Obama administration last month cut the frequency of the attacks. Some senior US officials think they have reached the point of diminishing returns and the administration is debating the rate at which they should continue.

Why the Faithful Approve of Torture

by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

Interesting article on the relationship between violence and Christianity.

http://www.truthout.org/050409N?n

The more often you go to church, the more you approve of torture. This is a troubling finding of a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Shouldn't it be the opposite? After all, who would Jesus torture? Since Jesus wouldn't even let Peter use a sword and defend him from arrest, it would seem that those who follow Jesus would strenuously oppose the violence of torture. But, not so in America today.

Instead, more than half of people who attend worship at least once a week, or 54%, said that using torture on suspected terrorists was "often" or "sometimes" justified. White evangelical Protestants were the church-going group most likely to approve of torture. By contrast, those who are unaffiliated with a religious organization and didn't attend worship were most opposed to torture - only 42% of those people approved of using torture.

One possible way to interpret this extraordinary Pew data is cultural. White evangelical Protestants tend to be culturally conservative and they make up a large percentage of the so-called Republican "base". Does the approval of torture by this group demonstrate their continuing support for the previous administration? That may be.

But I think it is possible, even likely, that this finding has a theological root. The UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person..." White Evangelical theology bases its view of Christian salvation on the severe pain and suffering undergone by Jesus in his flogging and crucifixion by the Romans. This is called the "penal theory of the atonement" - that is, the way Jesus paid for our sins is by this extreme torture inflicted on him.

For Christian conservatives, severe pain and suffering are central to their theology. This is very clear in the 2002 Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ. Evangelical Christians flocked to this movie, promoted it and still show it in their churches, despite the fact that it is R-rated for the extraordinary amount of violence in the film. It is, in fact, the highest grossing R-rated movie in the history of film. The flogging of Jesus by the Romans goes on for fully 40 minutes. It is truly the most violent film I have ever seen.

The message of the movie, and a message of a lot of conservative Christian theology, is that severe pain and suffering are not foreign to Christian faith, but central.

Of course, this is an interpretation of Jesus' life, death and resurrection that I reject. It is also an interpretation that I believe has done a lot of harm through the centuries. I think it is impossible, yes, impossible, if you read the Gospels, to make the case that God wanted Jesus tortured for the sins of humanity. But that is an interpretation that has sometimes been made in the history of Christianity and the social and political fallout has been, and is today, that torture is OK, maybe even more than OK. This Pew finding may just be another in a long line of horrible historical examples of that.

Bad Trouble in Pakistan

It doesn't look good kids.

“Pakistan is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear weapons in its hip pocket, right in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world.”


By William Rivers Pitt

America's attention has for several years been focused on the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for good reason. Thousands upon thousands of American troops, along with tens of thousands of civilians, have been killed and maimed. The consequences for the world from these ongoing wars weigh heavily upon everything from global foreign policy to international economics to energy. A butterfly can flap its wings in Baghdad or Kabul, and half the planet will feel the breeze.

But a suicide bomber in Pakistan rammed a car packed with explosives into a jeep filled with troops today, killing five and wounding as many as 21, including several children who were waiting for a ride to school. Residents of the region where the attack took place are fleeing in terror as gunfire rings out around them, and government forces have been unable to quell the violence. Two regional government officials were beheaded by militants in retaliation for the killing of other militants by government forces.

As familiar as this sounds, it did not take place where we have come to expect such terrible events. This, unfortunately, is a whole new ballgame. It is part of another conflict that is brewing, one which puts what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan in deep shade, and which represents a grave and growing threat to us all. Pakistan is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear weapons in its hip pocket, right in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world.

The situation in brief: Pakistan for years has been a nation in turmoil, run by a shaky government supported by a corrupted system, dominated by a blatantly criminal security service, and threatened by a large fundamentalist Islamic population with deep ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this is piled atop an ongoing standoff with neighboring India that has been the center of political gravity in the region for more than half a century. The fact that Pakistan, and India, and Russia, and China all possess nuclear weapons and share the same space means any ongoing or escalating violence over there has the real potential to crack open the very gates of Hell itself.

Continue reading at

http://www.truthout.org/050509R?n


And please enjoy a drink and a song at Tikibunker:

www.myspace.com/tikibunker

Army recruiting games

What a world. There are absolutely no scruples left anywhere among the ruling corporate military class. They bend to the lowest lows with ease, playing limbo with our lives.

"A moral society and concerned citizenry should not stand idly by while its children are being manipulated into making choices they may not otherwise have made" --

Ah, but are we a moral society? Methinks not.


http://www.truthout.org/050509J?n

by Camillo “Mac” Bica

For several years now, the video game America's Army has ranked among the top ten online action games and has attracted more than nine million players who have participated in more than 380 million virtual "missions" from basic training to fighting the "War on Terrorism."

In recent years, America's Army has improved significantly, becoming even more sophisticated and desirable and expanding its application to console versions for Xbox and Xbox 360. Unless one is naive enough to believe that the Army has invested some $8 million to develop and merchandise this very violent video game for the entertainment and education of our young people, it is clear that the military has realized the value and effectiveness of video games in enticing young men and women to enlist. But hold on, as far-fetched as this may sound, naïve or not, that the intent and purpose of these games is to entertain and educate, is exactly what the Army would like us to believe.

According to Army Chief Marketing Officer Edward Walters, the new $12 million, 14,500-square-foot Army video arcade, a k a the Army Experience Center (AEC), at the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia, is not a recruiting station, but "a virtual education facility," that is, "a place for the American public to get educated about the Army and for us to show that the Army is very high-tech and relevant." Major Larry Dillard, the AEC program manager, would like us believe that playing Americas Army and "wasting" bad guys from the simulated life-size Apache helicopter, Black Hawk helicopter, and armored Humvee that grace this high-tech facility are recreational, educational, and give young people "the opportunity to experience the Army for themselves, so they have an understanding of what soldiers do, and they can be proud of their service."

The AEC is conveniently located near a popular skateboard park in the mall. Teenagers as young as thirteen, after growing weary of throwing "ollies" and "goofy footed kick turns" are welcome to drop in and chill out at the AEC. After providing the Army "greeters" (active duty recruiters, dressed not in uniforms but in polo shirts and khaki trousers) with their contact information, enthusiasts are welcome to avail themselves, free of charge, of the helicopter and Humvee simulators and the seventy-nine educational and motivational "gaming stations that include nineteen brand new XBOX 360 consoles and sixty custom-built, high-performance Alienware." The AEC web site boasts that "gamers can play the latest, most popular gaming titles, go head to head in tournaments, or just enjoy an afternoon as a virtual soldier." Hosts (also recruiters) are available to help, answer questions, talk of their personal experiences in the military, or just engage in friendly banter with the gamers.

For the most part, the teenagers find this overall experience to be awesome and totally cool. For the Army's part, the investment has been money well-spent as the Army Experience Center is able to attract the same number of recruits as five traditional recruiting centers in the area surrounding Bensalem, the Philadelphia suburb where Franklin Mills Mall is located.

If the AEC's plethora of video games and simulators are intended to enable young people "to get educated about the Army" and gain insight into what to expect should they join the military, as a former Marine Corps officer and college professor, I would like to offer the following suggestions regarding a few additional "games" that would enhance learning and make the experience more authentic. Perhaps the Army should consider adding the Stop Loss Game in which players are prevented from leaving the Experience Center despite having completed their tour of the facility and instead, are forced to play again and again against their will. And how about a PTSD Game in which four out of ten players will relive the "game" experience for the rest of their lives, or become virtually homeless, or a substance abuser, or commit virtual suicide? Or perhaps the VA Maize Game would be enlightening, in which players must negotiate endless bureaucratic red tape and indifference as they attempt to receive care for their virtual war injuries. Finally, I think that the addition of the Military Rape Experience, an interactive and violent game in which every third female and every 10th male who plays is sexually assaulted, would provide players a more accurate understanding of what lies in store should they decide to enlist in the military.

What is clear is that these games profoundly affect the way our children think and see the world and that the military is utilizing this technology to manipulate our children first to view the military positively; second to encourage them to enlist, and third to program them to kill. Whatever one's particular point of view regarding military service, to morally object to this influencing of our children is not to be anti-military or even anti-recruitment. Rather, it is to be anti-deception, anti-manipulation and pro-honesty.

A moral society and concerned citizenry should not stand idly by while its children are being manipulated into making choices they may not otherwise have made - choices that will affect them for the rest of their lives. In this new era of transparency, truth in recruiting is not radical, nor too much to expect. It is morally obligatory.

Obama Slashes Social Security

WASHINGTON--For the first time in more than three decades, recipients will not get any increase in their benefits next year, federal forecasts show. The absence of cost-of-living adjustment, calculated under a formula set by law, will be a shock to older Americans already hit by plummeting home values, investment losses and rising health costs. More than 50 million people receive Social Security. Beneficiaries have received automatic cost-of-living adjustments every year since 1975. Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, predicted that inflation would remain low for several years,[oh yeah] so Social Security might not pay a cost-of-living increase until 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/us/politics/03benefits.html?_r=1

"Millions of beneficiaries will see their Social Security checks reduced for the first time." --David M. Certner, AARP

The CIA televised media networks are virtually silent on this issue, since they can't portray Big Brutha as being "uncompassionate" towards the proles. Funny, the government has trillions available for the rapacious rats and tapeworms on Wall Street but when it comes to the common elderly masses "money is tight". To President Obama's credit he has remained faithful to his campaign promise of "change" to the American people. Maybe not the type of change most people anticipated, but change nonetheless. But if the population is moronic enough to continue voting for two obvious state-controlled parties then they deserve "change".

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think." --Hitler

Argentina: A One Million-Signature Goal

Argentina: A One Million-Signature Goal
By Scott Corrales

INEXPLICATA contributing editor Guillermo Gimenez sent us an e-mail this morning with regard to a news item in El Popular On-Line (www.popular online.com.ar) about the one million signatures to be collected by Argentina’s UFO research community, asking President Christina Kirchner to declassify the nation’s voluminous UFO holdings. The researchers involved in this gargantuan effort are known to readers of this publication: Silvia Perez Simondini of the VISION OVNI group, Elias Kolev, Quique Mario of the defunct CEUFO organization, Carlos Iurchuk, Salvatore Carta and many, many others.

The article – written by Patxi LaFata and dated 05.03.09 – states that this meeting was held at Perez Simondini’s headquarters, the Museo OVNI in the city of Victoria. “It was marvelous,” LaFata quotes Simondini as saying, “we were all in the same frequency, there was no discord, and quite the contrary, everyone supported the initiative and voted positively. It was an unforgettable experience with first rank professionals from all parts of the country, who gathered under the idea of meeting, exchanging ideas and creating something new.” Through her museum and Internet-based radio show, Simondini is doing her level best to insure that matters concerning UFOs and ufology are made known to all Argentineans and researchers around the world.

The new organization formed as a result of this gathering is to be known as CEFORA and will lobby for the declassification of UFO materials.

The project will require a minimum of one hundred thousand citizen signatures – the amount needed to attract the attention of a legislator or political figure interested in sponsoring the endeavor. “Subsequently,” adds Simondini, “the amount of one million signatures will be needed for the matter to be discussed” in the Argentinean Congress. Not an easy task.

CEFORA’s resolutions calls for “requesting those in charge of the National Ministry of Defense, the National Presidency and the Chamber of Deputies to declassify all information pursuant to the UFO phenomenon in Argentina regardless of any regional initiatives that may be underway.”

We wish this new organization the best of luck in securing this goal, and will continue to apprise our readers of its progress.

The Lizards of Vung Tau (or The Great Phuc Uuus Massacre)

The title is the link ;)

Homeland Security Part II

2nd 'Domestic Extremism' report includes 'alternative media', 'tax resisters' in lexicon
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=96916

"Two weeks before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security penned its controversial report warning against "right-wing extremists" in the United States, it generated a memo defining dozens of additional groups--animal rights activists, black separatists, tax protesters, even worshippers of the Norse god Odin--as potential "threats". The lexicon defines "alternative media" as "a term to describe various information sources that provide a forum for interpretations of events and issues that differ radically from those presented in mass media products and outlets." It addresses the nature and scope of the threat that domestic, non-Islamic extremism poses to the United States."

This extensive inclusion of other groups besides Muslims as 'terrorist threats' has always been a prime ulterior objective of 9/11. By exploiting the fabricated "threat" of some CIA created Islamic tribal gang and then blaming the destruction of the Twin Towers on them, the state is now free to comprehensively target elements of the American population ("domestic, non-Islamic") which they consider as being the true enemy all along. When a nation is controlled by an effete class of banking scum, there can be no other outcome than the gradual devolution of society into a third-world Orwellian state.

Sleepyheads or CIA?

Hi,

Just a SHOUT OUT to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alexander Cockburn, Chip Berlet, et al with a new song out of Boston by Passion Pit.





Also I found the true source of the material on the link on Chomsky. It’s Alex Constantine.


http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/04/chomsky-manufactures-consent-on.html


Lyrics to Sleepyhead

And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going –

And you said
It was like fire around the brim
Burning solid,
Burning thin the burning rim
Like stars burning holes right through the dark
You gave fire like saltwater into my eyes
You were an inch from the edge of this bed
I drive you back a sleepyhead, sleepyhead

They couldn't think of something to say the day you burst
With all their lions and all their might and all their thirst
They crowd your bedroom like some thoughts wearing thin
Against the walls, against your rules, against your skin
My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes, begonia skies like a sleepyhead, sleepyhead

I knew it was wrong but thought it was legal awards

The updated male cowardice awards in format designed to freak out homophobic generals, jurists and politicians... revised, refined, enlightening spontaneous bulimia...

the above title is the link ;)

Where Howard and Noam Won’t Roam

I’m disappointed that Howard Zinn said the following statements about 9/11, BUT I’m not surprised that either Zinn or Noam Chomsky would call the 9/11 Truth Movement a “diversion” from the “real work” and “an enormous waste of good energy” that will “lead nowhere.” So everything they try to change has to have a high likelihood of success or they don’t try it? Is energy expended toward uncovering secrets of the state actually ever wasted? I don’t get this defeatist attitude coming from an activist!

The reason I’m not surprised is because they’re both part of the Far Left Intellectual Establishment that views “conspiracy theory” as “right wing paranoia.” Many leftist activists are so out of their element in this mind space that they spaz out and can’t see straight.

I’ll let Richard C. Cook say it better:


*******************************************
May 1, 2009: Say It Ain’t So, Howard Zinn!
by Richard C. Cook

Howard Zinn, 86-year old folk hero, activist, professor, historian, and author of one of the great books of American popular literature, A People’s History of the United States, is telling people that searching for the truth about what really happened on 9/11 “is a diversion.”

Say it ain’t so, Howard Zinn!

He used the word “diversion” several times during an interview on The Real News Network with senior editor Paul Jay. http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3553

Here are some excerpts:

“There are some issues that are interesting but are diversions from what we really have to do. This is one of them.”

“Maybe there was a conspiracy. Who knows?”

“It’ll go on and on and on and people will write books and talk about it; it’ll be an enormous waste of good energy….I just don’t think that it leads anywhere.”

In the interview, Paul Jay points out to Zinn that much of current U.S. foreign policy, such as the Afghan War, “still has its roots in 9/11.” Making it clear that no matter what we may think about conspiracies, Jay states that peculiarities about 9/11 are part of the historical record.

For instance, he cites the fact that then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged to the 9/11 Commission that she had been warned about an attack by Osama bin Laden during the summer of 2001 but that she did nothing about it. Jay also points out that “hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans” question the official version.

Zinn: “It will never be clear. It will be one of those situations where nobody will ever be able to prove anything, and it will lead us nowhere.”

To be fair to Zinn, he also states that “9/11 was used as an excuse by the Bush administration to go to war,” but adds that what should be investigated is, “Why are there people in the world who want to blow up our buildings, who want to scare the American people, who want to do terrorist [things],” and who “are enraged by American foreign policy.”

He says, “We should be concentrating on in what way is American foreign policy responsible for the terrorism that exist in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world and which in a small number of them results in violent acts.”

It reminds me of another famous 9/11 conspiracy debunker, Professor Noam Chomsky. On October 6, 2006, Chomsky said on ZNet: “One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis.” http://www.oilempire.us/chomsky.html

It would be easy to criticize Zinn for failing to be consistent. He knows how important the study and writing of history really is. In his People’s History of the United States he set out to correct the record about the role of the labor movement, U.S. imperialism in Latin America and around the world, the violence of our culture, and many other issues.

Zinn knows, as we all do who have worked in the genre, that the writing of history is about discovering the truth. We know that absolute truth about the past is an impossibility. But we can try to get close, because the truth matters. A good historian is a scientist, attempting to draw conclusions from factual data. A good historian knows that even small discoveries, properly validated, can change the way we view the past and make decisions in the present.

But doesn’t what Zinn is saying about 9/11 go beyond the writing of history? Isn’t he suggesting by talking about “the people who want to blow up our buildings” that it is probable that those who carried out the 9/11 attacks really were a few angry Arabs with box-cutters, just like the Bush administration told us? Isn’t he asking us to buy into the government’s own flawed conspiracy theory regardless of whether we think the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition or the Pentagon was attacked by a missile rather than an airliner, or whatever?

It doesn’t seem to me Howard Zinn really is saying we’ll never know what actually happened on 9/11 or that trying to find out is a “diversion.” It seems to me that what he is saying is itself a diversion. Please correct me, Mr. Zinn, if I am wrong.

Richard C. Cook is a former federal analyst who writes on public policy issues. His book “We Hold These Truths: the Hope of Monetary Reform” is now available at http://www.tendrilpress.com. His website is http://www.richardccook.com.



See also:

http://www.oilempire.us/chomsky.html

"Where Noam will not roam:
Chomsky manufactures consent, supports the official stories of 9/11 and JFK"


"That's an internet theory and it's hopelessly implausible. Hopelessly implausible. So hopelessly implausible I don't see any point in talking about it."


Chomsky's attitude on 9/11 is really amazing. You must take some time to check it out. Here's part of it:

In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky has made an incredible assertion:

"There's by now a small industry on the thesis that the administration had something to do with 9-11. I've looked at some of it, and have often been asked. There's a weak thesis that is possible though extremely unlikely in my opinion, and a strong thesis that is close to inconceivable. The weak thesis is that they knew about it and didn't try to stop it. The strong thesis is that they were actually involved. The evidence for either thesis is, in my opinion, based on a failure to understand properly what evidence is. Even in controlled scientific experiments one finds all sorts of unexplained phenomena, strange coincidences, loose ends, apparent contradictions, etc. Read the letters in technical science journals and you'll find plenty of samples. In real world situations, chaos is overwhelming, and these will mount to the sky. That aside, they'd have had to be quite mad to try anything like that. It would have had to involve a large number of people, something would be very likely to leak, pretty quickly, they'd all be lined up before firing squads and the Republican Party would be dead forever. That would have happened whether the plan succeeded or not, and success was at best a long shot; it would have been extremely hard to predict what would happen."